January 31st, 2011

So FINALLY, we’ve hit the last day of January.  Adios my least favorite month of the year, I don’t have to see you again for 11 months.  My next battle is my second least favorite month of the year, February.  But there are good things about this month.  It houses my mom’s, Elizabeth’s, and Grandpa Coco’s birthday, Valentine’s Day, and we don’t have to take down Christmas decorations this month (well some people might, you know THOSE people, but not us).  Mother Nature decided to make January end with a bang and February to start with attitude.  The meteorologists are making proclamations of freezing rain, then massive snow with dangerous winds, causing power lines to go down, and a city of no power and abundant amounts of snow keeping us all either shut in our houses or plowing through snow in search for electricity.  The grocery store soared in popularity and the Bond family Monday night waited for it all to start and see how this chapter in our lives was going to end.  When life gives you a grim weather forecast, make chili.

The girls on the counter helping me make the salad.

January 30th, 2011

The kids like olives….check.  The kids like chicken….check.  The kids like tomato sauce….check.  The kids like cous cous….check.

Did they like chicken and green olives with a tomato sauce?  Not so much.  But they ate the cous cous.  As Julie would say, “it is what it is.”

January 26th, 2011

We had a spaghetti squash taking up space on our refrigerator for days weeks months.  I was certain it had gone bad, but cut it open and it was fine.  Who knew!  So I decided to roast it in the oven.

All done from oven spa treatment!

Scrap it out with a fork and it automatically comes out like spaghetti! 

tossed it with sautéed garlic, parsley, salt, and pepper.  It made a great side dish to the mini meatloaves that Lauren picked out from Cooking Light.

Meat loaf, meet squash.  Squash, meet meat loaf.

January 25th, 2011

My 2 favorite sections in the St. Louis Post Dispatch are the Wednesday Eat section and Friday Go section.  I look forward to the Go section more this time of year because I love to see what award nominated movies have finally made it to St Louis and the critics reviews.  I rarely cut out recipes from the Eat section, but have from time to time or it gives me ideas, especially when our garden was in full harvest mode and I was searching for recipes for Midwest crops.  I also like the recipe exchange for local restaurants.  It’s fun to see how a restaurant makes the dish and alarming at the amount of fat is in it, no wonder it tastes so darn good when you’re eating out!  A couple months ago there was a recipe for Spinach Pie from Adriana’s on the Hill.  I decided to give it a try.  I love the idea of pie of any form.

Adriana's Spinach Pie

It was decent, but don’t think I’ll make it again, because when I defrosted the spinach in the microwave this happened.

The microwave caught on fire, melted the glass plate, and has been unusable ever since.  The good news is after a week of phone calls and paperwork requests, LG is sending out a technician on Wednesday to assess the situation.  The bad news is I can’t reheat the leftover spinach pie in a quick like manner.

January 22nd, 2011

So we were supposed to be leaving this morning for Kansas City to celebrate Christmas and Elizabeth’s 10th birthday celebration, but an intimidating forecast caused us to stay put.  We were really disappointed since the girls and I haven’t seen Trent’s family since Thanksgiving.  We spent the morning at the YMCA and headed home for lunch.  I wasn’t really planning on cooking today, so I opened the refrigerator and assessed the situation.  There was asparagus.  “What about asparagus frittata?”  I asked Trent.  “I’m not in the mood for eggs, I already had breakfast.”  Hmmm, back to the drawing board.  Re-assessing I came up with a rice dish risotto style, but with regular rice.

It is so fun putting Sydney down for naps in her big girl bed, it makes her look so little!

I finally whined enough convinced Trent it was a good idea to order new bedding for Sydney last night.  The quilt she has right now was from my Great Aunt Anna.  I like it, but wanted Sydney to have new bedding since Lauren did when she got her big girl bed.  I like to keep things even.  Sydney’s favorite color is purple, so it’s purple-ish bedding with flowers and Lauren has the exact same bedding, only pink.  I’m excited to get it and set it all up.

That night Markham invited us over for dinner.  She made Beef and Fennel Ragu from a recipe in the St Louis Post Dispatch that was awesome with a great salad.  I had mine over crusty bread and it was perfect comfort for yucky January. 

January 21st, 2011

So they say if your kids cook with you, they won’t be as picky.  If you have the kids help with a garden and growing food, they will be more willing to try things.  If you have them try foods 10-15 times they will eventually get used to the taste of that food.  If you sneak in pureed veggies, they won’t notice and will eat the food.  If the kids go grocery shopping with you, they will more likely eat their dinner.  If you just put out what’s for dinner without alternating anything, the kids will eventually eat what’s in front of them without dirty sock faces and extensive inspection of said food.  I’ve tried it all.  Many times.  I do have to say growing the garden probably worked the most.  Lauren discovered her love for raw tomatoes, she pops grape tomatoes like they’re grapes.  Sydney discovered her love for sage.  The pureed veggies in things does work too, zucchini and carrots in pasta sauces or chili is my main trick. But I’ve also sabotaged what would have been a well liked meal by going overboard with the puree thing.  The whole thing seems like an exhausting and winless battle.

So one of my goals is to spend more quality time with Lauren in the afternoons when Sydney naps.  I’ve gotten into a bad habit of doing projects, computer stuff (like I’m doing right now), or house stuff once the weather got cold and shunned us indoors.  When the weather is nice, Lauren and I spend much of our afternoons outside doing various things and it’s great.  So I had a couple of cooking magazines I wanted to page through and was under a blanket on the couch and Lauren asked if she could lay with me under the blanket.  We paged through a Everyday Rachel Ray and a Cooking Light.  Lauren loved looking at all the food and picked out all kinds of recipes she thought looked good and asked if I would make them.  Done and Done.  First on Lauren’s list:

 

Walnut and Breadcrumb Pasta with a Soft Egg.  I would never have picked out this recipe, but it was absolutely fantastic!  I’m not a soft egg person, but the yolk make a delicious sauce for the pasta.  It felt like a simple, yet elegant dish for some reason.  For the girls, I made hard boiled eggs and put them separate from their pasta.  They both ate dinner happily and Lauren was even mad at me for eating the leftovers for lunch the next day….oops. 

January 19th, 2011

This week in school Lauren is “Star of the Week.”  It’s a fun project (albeit one that requires many mom to do’s) that Lauren and I have been working on.  She had to do a poster and get up in front of the class and talk about it.  The poster also had a sheet of paper where she filled out all her favorite things.  She brought a bag home from school and picked 5 toys to put into it and show them to the kids in her class.  The tricky part is the toys had to stay at school all week.   Logically, Lauren wanted to take her absolute favorites, *those* toys that I knew would be a cause of tears that first night when she realized her comfort toys are snug in her classroom and not in her bed.  So we picked kinda sorta favorite toys (translation – ones she wouldn’t miss at home).  She also brought in a snack for her class, peanut butter and cracker sandwiches.  No peanut allergies in her class thankfully.  It was already a short week with MLK day on Monday and we ended up having a snow day on Thursday.  So Star of the Week was really star of 3 days, but she never noticed.

Lauren dresses herself in the mornings and does a good job.  She had her big presentation of her poster and toys…..with her shirt on backwards.  Never noticed when she left the house, but noticed immediately when she came home…after the fact.  Her teacher took these pictures and sent them to me.  I love getting a sneak peak of Lauren in action at school.

Dinner was a holiday tortellini soup from Taste of Home.  I guess the holiday was star of the week and MLK Day??  I think I must have picked up the magazine at the Y one day or something, it’s been in my recipe binder forever and this is the first time I tried it.  It was easy and I thought the kids would like it, which kinda happened.  They picked out the tortellini, but I think a couple pieces of spinach sneaked into their bellies.

January 16th, 2011

Night of the Golden Globes and Sydney got her big girl bed!  Big day in the house of Bonds.  The girls love watching the red carpet, so I decided to do a dinner of appetizers to eat in front of the TV while we seriously discuss fashion.  Statements like “oh mom, she’s got a big necklace, that’s fancy” or “oh, that’s Rachel from Glee” or “Giuliana changed her dress!” or “Black Swan girl, Black Swan girl!” are as deep as we go (and no, the kids haven’t seen Black Swan, but they have white swan Barbies and I told them when I went to see the movie the premise and about it actually being a ballet, so now whenever they see the movie poster or Natalie Portman, she’s black swan girl). 

Family favorite nibbles and when the girls went to bed, I made ricotta and pea puree crostinis.   Lauren, Trent, and I are huge fans of french onion dip with veggies.  If I have it in the house, it’s all I think about when I’m hungry.  So for a special occasion I bought some and did a bunch of veggies.  I think Sydney ate the whole bowl of olives with some cheese crackers.  Oh well, it’s golden globes, I’m taking a night off of playing household nutritionist. 

January 15th, 2011

So today was the last day for Sydney to be in her crib, tomorrow she’s getting a big girl bed.  My parents are giving us Julie’s old bed from their house, which I am excited about.  It’s long overdue, but we said we wanted to wait until after the holidays.  Not sure why, I guess one thing at a time (but really I just wasn’t ready to be a crib free house, this crib has been part of our lives in that spot in this room since 2005), so Holidays first, big girl bed next was the plan.  I had to take a picture of the crib to list it on Craigslist, but I forgot to do it until Sydney was already in her crib for naptime. 

I am so glad I took this picture with her in it (the picture I used for craigslist you can’t see Sydney’s face).  The end of an era!  I am completely shocked at the age of 3, Sydney has never climbed out of her crib either, she is a total monkey and loves to make playground equipment out of any household furniture.

For dinner I made Rachel Ray’s Poppy Teriyaki Glazed Chicken.  I omitted the plums because Trent and the girls love plums (stick with me on this), but I knew they wouldn’t eat them warm in the dish, so why waste perfectly good plums when the family will have them for snacks in their natural state.  I also omitted the poppy seeds because Trent had a drug test at work coming up (that is actually not remotely true at all, I’m just in a mood and thought of that Seinfeld episode with poppy seed bagels).  Overall it was good, not awesome or life changing, but a decent meal.

January 12th, 2011

Trent is having drinks after work with a college friend, so the girls and I are on our own for the night.  I keep it pretty simple when it’s just us girls.

Olive oil, garlic, sage, butter, salt, and pepper.

Simmer in a small skillet until it makes a super yummy sauce.

To toss together with gnocchi.  Super fast and super delicious.

Enjoying it in your finest princess frocks is completely optional.